Rwanda Adopting Video Based Technology For Lung Surgery

The burgeoning “healthcare at home” movement echoes what consumers are clamoring for across almost every industry— more convenience and flexibility. While using telemedicine may have once been a matter of personal preference, the COVID-19 pandemic made it nearly a necessity.

The unprecedented crisis triggered large-scale responses by governments and businesses alike, ushering in a new reliance on virtual care delivery as well as innovations across healthtech as a whole.

Rwanda is a perfect example of what Healthtech should encompass, Healthtech includes any technology-enabled healthcare product and service that can be delivered or consumed outside of a hospital or physician’s office—one notable exception being hospital and practice management software.

In Rwanda, a team of thoracic surgeons from different countries headed by Dr. Diego Gonzalez Rivas had a two-day training visit at King Faisal Hospital (KFH) to introduce a uniportal video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) technique in Rwanda.

According to Dr. Gonzalez, the classic approach (the open thoracic surgery) of doing a big incision of 20cms and open the chest with a manual operation is the most painful operation for the patient, which means that the patient has to stay in the hospital for an extended period of time.

For this new technique, Gonzalez Rivas said “We do an incision of 3cms and we work with an endoscopic camera to move instruments from outside while watching on the screen, in 2-3 days we can send the patient home.”